Front Burner - Ethiopia’s war with itself

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Ethiopia’s deadly war in Tigray province is now threatening to engulf the entire country as rebels move toward the capital and a humanitarian crisis intensifies. Reporter Zecharias Zelalem explains how the conflict got to this point and where it could go from here.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Angela Starrett. The kids are unimaginable. They don't even, I don Angela Starrett. Every grocery store, any corner store, and they need to kill any man. In November 2020, the Ethiopian government and its allies started a brutal military campaign against the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, the ruling party of the country's northern region.

This happened after Tigrayan forces were accused of attacking an army base to steal weapons. In the years since, as the civil war has stretched on, two million people have been driven from their homes, thousands have died, and both sides have been accused of ethnic massacres and other war crimes. My uncle was coming back from church, and that's where they were killed, him on the street. crimes. We throw them over a cliff. Their hand was tied behind them. Five of them was thrown over a cliff. And then they give them the body eight days later.

So he was buried eight days later. He got two kids, young kids, and his wife was pregnant, seven months that time. That's Britoit Erafine, a Tigrayan woman who now lives in Ottawa. Last year, she says her brother, uncle, and cousin were killed in a massacre by Eritrean troops allied with the Ethiopian government. Over the course of two days in late November, Eritrean forces reportedly killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in the town of Aksum, known as Ethiopia's holiest city.

We're going through horrors. I don't know what we did. All I know is the ground people are very kind and humble people. Since then, the fighting has intensified. But it's hard to know the full scale of the violence. Journalists and aid groups have been driven out of the country, effectively cutting Tigray off from the rest of the world. The rest of Britovich's family, including her mother, are still in Tigray.

She hasn't heard from them in over six months. If they don't kill you, they know that hunger will kill you. So I don't know what my mom is eating. I hope they are alive. That's all I can say. Now, hundreds of thousands of people in the region are at risk of starvation as a crippling famine worsens and the fighting continues. A new frontier in Ethiopia's war. Rebels in Tigray say they are advancing further south towards the capital Addis Ababa.

The federal government has declared a nationwide state of emergency. Prime Minister Abe Ahmed has asked all Ethiopians to mobilize and fight back against the rebels. There are many challenges, but I can tell you with certainty, without a doubt, we will score a comprehensive victory. Last week, Ethiopia's Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, declared a state of emergency after reports the rebels are planning to take the capital. Today on FrontBurner, journalist Zakaria Zalalem explains how we got here, what this growing humanitarian crisis really looks like,

and how the tide may be turning in favor of Tigrayan rebels. Hi, Zacharias. Hi, how's it going? I'm well. Thank you so much for being here today. And I want to start with the basics here before we get into the situation in the country right now. So who are the key players in this conflict and why are they fighting? So the Ethiopian government has been at war with the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, TPLF, which was the regional government of Ethiopia's northern Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, TPLF, which was the regional government of Ethiopia's northern Tigray region. The Ethiopian government, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, came to power in 2018,

and when he did, he ousted members of the TPLF, who had dominated Ethiopian government for up to three decades. Widespread anti-government protests, which many once feared could develop into all-out civil war, had instead forced an entrenched authoritarian regime from power. Ethiopia's ruling People's Revolutionary Democratic Front has finally chosen a new chairman. Abiy Ahmed won 60% of the votes in parliament to become the first prime minister of Oroma descent. The two had always been at odds for years, but had a real falling out last year when the Tigray region held elections

that were not recognized by the Ethiopian government. Polls have closed in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region. Regional parliamentary elections went ahead despite the federal government postponing polls due to coronavirus. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has called it illegal but has ruled out responding with force. This is the latest challenge. And as tensions worsened, war broke out in November of 2020. broke out in November of 2020. Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abe Ahmed has ordered the military to launch its final offensive against rebel leaders

in the northern region of Tigray in a conflict that aid groups fear could worsen the humanitarian crisis there. In a statement, Mr Abe said there was a carefully devised strategy to defeat the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front in the regional capital Makale without harming civilians. And what the Ethiopian government had promised to be a quick blitzkrieg operation to remove the TPLF from the region ended up being a very long, drawn-out, bloody civil war, fraught with horrific atrocities, rape of women, something like two million people displaced,

and now a man-made famine. In 2018, Ethiopia saw a major shift in its politics. a major shift in its politics. You know, after years of discontent, the TPLF lost power and Abiy Ahmed, at the helm of a new political party, was appointed as prime minister. And at this time, he also won the Nobel Peace Prize for facilitating a major peace deal between Eritrea and Ethiopia. I accept this award on behalf of Ethiopians and Eritreans, especially those who

made the ultimate sacrifice in the cause of peace. So right now, you know, in 2018, Ethiopia looks really good on the world stage. He's this hero. I wonder, like, can you tell us what's changed then in the span of just two years? When Abiy Ahmed came to power, he came on the back of popular uprisings across the country with protesters having had enough of three decades of authoritarian rule by the TPLF, widespread rampant corruption, a very thin razor tolerance for criticism that landed activists, journalists, and the opposition politicians in jail. The TPLF was widely unpopular when its rule came to an end. It's why when Abiy Ahmed came to power, promising reform, promising to open up the political space, inviting exiled

politicians to come back to the country, and then eventually striking the peace deal with Eritrea that ended 20 years of hostility. There was lots of reason to be optimistic. And as you said, in the eyes of the world, it was a real feel-good story coming out from a region known for authoritarianism and war over the course of the next two to three years. Unfortunately, the Ethiopian government did not remain true to its promises. Opposition politicians that were allowed back in the country, a lot of their members were re-arrested. Journalist outlets that had reopened with the promise that they'd be able to operate unperturbed were largely shut down by mid-2020. And by mid-2020, the Ethiopia of Abiy Ahmed started to look more and more like the

Ethiopia of the previous administration. It's a tragic decline. And let's fast forward to what we're seeing now. You know, one year into this war, Tigrayan forces had been nearly overwhelmed, but that's changed now. Tell me how that's changed. Covering this war has been extremely difficult due to the fact that much of the war has been fought in areas with no phone, no internet connections. Verification of some of the harrowing accounts that were emerging from the war zones became impossible at times. Atrocities would be reported on days, sometimes months after they occurred due to the information blackout in the region. What is known is that on November 28, three weeks into the fighting, the Ethiopian government

managed to capture the Tigray regional capital of Mekelle. We want to send a message to the public in Mekelle to save themselves from any artillery attacks and free themselves from the junta. After that, there will be no mercy. And the Ethiopian government declared victory and the beginning of a rebuilding phase. Of course, now we know that in hindsight that those calls were premature. And Tigrayan rebels were able to recruit fighters en masse, due in no small part to the fact that Ethiopian and Eritrean troops

committed heinous atrocities against the civilian population. Ethnic cleansing, weaponized rape, and the Tigrayan rebels were able to recapture their own capital city and recapture swaths of the Tigray region that they had lost. Tigray television is broadcasting its fighters' triumph. In the past few days, the rebel group known as the TPLF has captured the strategically vital towns of Dese and Kombolcha, perhaps a turning point in this civil war. And eventually the Tigrayan rebels went on a counterattack into neighboring regions.

So the war that for six or seven months had been fought solely in the Tigray region is now being fought in neighboring Afar and Amhara regions. And as we stand now, the Tigrayan rebels have struck an alliance with rebels from elsewhere in the country, and the factions are, they openly threatened to assault the capital with the goal of ousting the government. Last week, the prime minister declared a state of emergency as Tigrayan forces reportedly were advancing toward the capital, and he even ordered civilians to arm themselves. What exactly does the state of emergency look like? So this would be the third nationwide state of emergency in Ethiopia over the course of the past five to six years. And in Ethiopia, state of emergency essentially means that the country's national constitution is suspended. Things like rule of law and due process

are no longer binding by the constitution and the state has the authorities to conduct mass arrests if it needs. Ethiopian forces and Ethiopian police have been detaining ethnic Tigrayan civilians, in particular in the capital city Addis Ababa, on a mass that have been widely condemned by international human rights organizations. And thousands are believed to have been detained at two or three sites near the capital city. You know, the rebels, as they advanced towards the cities of Dessi and Kombolcha, they displaced something like half a million people in the Amhara region. They committed a slew of atrocities. And there is reason to fear that they may exacerbate the humanitarian crisis if they do make a push on the capital city. And how is that state of emergency or, you know, the actions from the

federal government impacting aid from getting in? Well, long before the state of emergency was declared, aid organizations had been complaining about being unable to reach the Tigray region, where there are something like half a million people in famine-like conditions. So you have a potential famine, something that could be on par with the biblical famine of 1984, the one that costs something like a million lives, a famine that Ethiopia has for decades become synonymous with. So the Ethiopian government has essentially weaponized food aid. Aid organizations, the UN, have repeatedly made calls on the Ethiopian government

to allow unfettered access to the region and allow food aid to reach the starving population. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples,

I help you and your partner being carried out in Ethiopia. And as you mentioned, evidence of sexual violence being used as a weapon of war. What can you tell us about that report? Yes, unfortunately, mass rape has been weaponized by all the factions fighting, but especially by troops from neighboring Eritrea. Since the war, how many patients have you seen roughly? Roughly 260. 260?

Yes. In this clinic alone? Yes. Since the war to now. Now? They are not knowing the person who raped, but as a group. They get many diseases. They acquire many diseases like HIV, like hepatitis.

So you have gang rapes, there's been women who've been interviewed and have told journalists that they were raped by as many as 15 soldiers over the course of several days or several weeks. Thousands of women are known to have been raped and of course this data is considered to be conservative data because most women are unlikely to have reported the rapes. The report, the joint United Nations Ethiopian Human Rights Commission report, does not really reveal the scale of the atrocities. Critics of the report, of course, point to the very credible claim that the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission,

which is funded by the government, likely downplayed abuses. There are some very well-known and very well-documented atrocities, including the Mahabaradego massacre of something like 50 civilians. It was videotaped and it was covered widely. And the investigators made no mention of the atrocities that were carried out at that town. In my opinion, the investigation should not have concluded because the abuses have not concluded. The abuses are ongoing. This war has highlighted the necessity and power of the information war. You know, propaganda campaigns fought over platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

How have you seen social media weaponized over the course of this conflict? Due primarily to the blackout and the fact that for the first, I believe for the first four months, journalists and aid workers were barred that for the first, I believe for the first four months, journalists and aid workers were barred from accessing the region, it was impossible to determine what was going on. It was impossible even to determine who was making advances, who had captured what city. We really relied on spokesmen from the two warring factions to deliver the facts. And they're not always reliable facts. For instance, one of the worst atrocities of the conflict, the Axum massacre of hundreds of men, occurred on November 28th of last year. And the world learned of it something

like three or four months later, in late February, when journalists and human rights organizations used satellite imagery and accumulated testimony to find out. So with the gap of information, what we've seen, especially in recent months, is social media being used to really sway the narrative one way or another. So unfortunately, social media has been weaponized by individuals with very nefarious purposes. And Facebook in particular has to shoulder a lot of the blame for either their inability or their unwillingness to take action to crack down on hate speech. Facebook has now removed a post from the country's prime minister for violating its policies against inciting violence. On Sunday, Mr. Abiy Ahmed called on citizens to take up arms to block the advance of the rebel

Tigray People's Liberation Front. He urged them to prevent, reverse, and bury the terrorist TPLF. I'm wondering, what do the people in Ethiopia on both sides, or I guess all sides of this, want the next steps to be? What do people think about the potential for, for example, UN intervention? We'll start there. Well, I mean, it's been a devastating conflict that has displaced millions of people, killed thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. And exacerbating things was the insistence by some of the warring factions that a military solution was the only way to go about it. In recent days, however, we have a cause for some very, very cautious optimism. have a cause for some very very cautious optimism the african union has sent an envoy president al-basanjo or former the former nigerian president al-basanjo who has been able to reach out and meet physically with leaders of both warring factions and both were both leaders appear to express

a willingness to pursue a mediated end to the conflict. So that's a major shift in stance, especially from the Ethiopian government, which had insisted that it would only deal with things through force, and a realization by both factions that if this were to proceed on the battlefield, we could be in for a quagmire that would continue for the next couple of years and cause untold devastation. I'm just wondering, as someone who grew up in Addis Ababa and has family and friends still in Ethiopia. What has it been like for you to witness what's, you know, this horrific situation really that's been unfolding in your country? So, as you said, most of my family are in Ethiopian capital, which has been largely untouched by fighting. And I wouldn't be able to compare my experiences over the past

year with those of fellow journalists and friends who hail from the Tigray region who have spent months without communicating with their family, who are unaware if they're alive, if they're eating, and of course, those who are mourning deaths of relatives at the hands of the various armies. My experiences are nothing in comparison with that. Of course, right now, I have every reason to be worried because an assault on the capital city by rebels, these are rebel factions with a poor track record when it comes to their human rights record.

Tigrayan rebels have committed all sorts of atrocities in the areas that they occupy. So to send thousands of these armed fighters Tigrayan rebels have committed all sorts of atrocities in the areas that they occupy. So to send thousands of these armed fighters into Ethiopia's most densely populated city, well, that's, I mean, it's an obvious recipe for disaster. And aside that, when you tell people you're from Ethiopia, and for most people, the first thing that comes to mind is the famine of the 1980s, the starvation, the biblical famine, the images of starving children, the warfare. Ethiopia made significant strides to shed that reputation over the course of the past 30 years. Ethiopia's economic growth, the construction boom, there was a lot of hope instilled in the youths and in the greater population, due in no small part to the reforms that we saw in 2018 when Abiy Ahmed came to power.

There was so much widespread optimism that we were going to see a country which would have free press, which is something that's unheard of in Ethiopia. Free elections, democratic debates, discussion, criticism of government, things that are guaranteed in democratic states. In a country like Ethiopia, we grew up being told to, you know, to focus or to speak about sports or movies, but never to talk about politics, because that's something that can land you behind bars. So I saw a major facelift in the making. And of course, all of that has gone down the drain. And we're back where we were 30 years ago with a civil war that has decimated the country and that has torn the fabric of the various ethnic groups involved in the fighting. So I'm quite honestly heartbroken. It hurts. It hurts profoundly as an Ethiopian.

I'm just wondering, why has it taken this long for the world to pay attention to this story? I mean, as a journalist who's covered the war since the breakout of hostilities a year ago, I guess one reason could be that unlike most conflicts you see today, unlike what we saw in Iraq, unlike what we saw a couple years ago or a year ago between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Ethiopian conflict was not covered in real time. People were not getting daily updates. It was impossible to verify these accounts due to the communications outages, due to the fact that most of us had to operate remotely. So journalists had to use satellite imagery. We worked with photo and video evidence that was smuggled out of the region. And this meant that atrocities, crimes, was often discovered months after they occurred.

For instance, the presence of Eritrean soldiers in this conflict was denied for months because there was no evidence that established their presence. The world largely learned of their presence by January and the prime minister finally admitted, the Ethiopian prime minister finally admitted that they were in the country in March. This made things, this made it very, very difficult to address the burgeoning humanitarian disaster in the first few months because even the scale of the the need was unknown even to even to Ethiopia-based aid agencies and however a year in I think there's been ample reporting on the issue there's been ample evidence of atrocities committed by all the factions I I think a year on, it's clear to the world

just how horrendous things have been in Ethiopia over the course of the past 12 months. Zakarias, thank you so much for taking us through this very difficult story. Thank you for having me. I wish the world would hear us in the beginning when we went on. They said genocide, they are coming to kill us. My brother will be alive if the international community can stop this last year.

So many lives would be saved, but nobody hears us. Nobody can save us. Nobody. Before we go today, an update that's developing as we speak. The United Nations confirms at least 16 of its staff members and their dependents have been arrested in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. They've asked the country's foreign minister for their immediate release. These arrests come one week after a joint investigation by the UN and Ethiopia's state-appointed commission revealed that all sides

may have committed atrocities that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. This follows a move by the Ethiopian government in late September ordering the expulsion of several UN officials for, quote, meddling in the country's internal affairs. That's it for today. I'm Angela Starrett, in for Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.